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other fellow's consciousness. What is needed at present is more of the mobilizing of the Negro's political power, pocketbook power and intellectual power (which are absolutely within the Negro's own control) to do for the Negro the things which the Negro needs to have done without depending upon or waiting for the co-operative action of white people. This co-operative action, whenever it does come, is a boon that no Negro, intelligent or unintelligent, affects to despise. But no Negro of clear vision, whether he be a leader or not, can afford to predicate the progress of the Negro upon such co-operative action, because it may not come.

Mr. Shillady may have seen these things. It is high time that all Negroes see these things whether their white professional friends see them or not.-July, 1920.

Our White Friends

In the good old days when the black man's highest value in the white man's eye was that of an object of benevolence especially provided by the Divine mind for calling out those tender out-pourings of charity which were so dear to the self-satisfied Caucasian-in those days the white men who fraternized with black people could do so as their guides, philosophers and friends without incurring any hostility on the part of black folk. Today, however, the white man who mixes with the black brother is having a hard time of it. Somehow Ham's offspring no longer feels proud of being "taken up" by the progeny of Japhet. And when the white man insists on mixing in with him the colored brother will persist in attributing ulterior motives.

What is the cause of this difference? The answer will be found only by one who refuses to wear the parochial

blinkers of Anglo-Saxon civilization and sees that the relations of the white and black race have changed and are changing all over the world. Such an observer would note that the most significant fact of the growing race consciousness is to be found in the inevitable second half of the word. It isn't because these darker people are motivated by race that their present state of mind constitutes a danger to Caucasian overlordship. It is because they have developed consciousness, intelligence, understanding. They have learned that the white brother is perfectly willing to love them—“in their place.” They have learned that that place is one in which they are not to develop brains and initiative, but must furnish the brawn and muscle whereby the white man's brain and initiative can take eternally the products of their brawn and muscle. There are today many white men who will befriend the Negro, who will give their dollars to his comfort and welfare, so long as the idea of what constitutes that comfort and welfare comes entirely from the white man's mind. Examples like those of Dr. Spingarn and Mr. E. D. Morel are numerous.

And not for nothing does the black man balk at the white man's "mixing in." For there are spies everywhere and the agent provocateur is abroad in the land. From Chicago comes the news by way of the Associated Press (white) that Dr. Jonas, who has always insisted in sticking his nose into the Negro peoples' affairs as their guide, philosopher and friend, has been forced to confess that he is a government agent, presumably paid for things which the government would later suppress. Dr. Jonas is reported to have said that he is connected with the British secret service; but since the second year of the European war it has been rather difficult for us poor devils to tell where the American government ended and the British

In any

government began, especially in these matters. case, we have Dr. Jonas' confession, and all the silly Negroes who listened approvingly to the senseless allegations made by Messrs. Jonas, Gabriel and others of a standing army of 4,000,000 in Abyssinia and of JapaneseAbyssinian diplomatic relations and intentions, must feel now very foolish about the final result.

How natural it was that Jonas, the white leader, should have gone scot free, while Redding and his other Negro dupes are held! How natural that Jonas should be the one to positively identify Redding as the slayer of the Negro policeman! And so, once again, that section of the Negro race that will not follow except where a white man leads will have to pay that stern penalty whereby Dame Experience teaches her dunces. Under the present circumstances we, the Negroes of the Western world, do pledge our allegiance to leaders of our own race, selected by our own group and supported financially and otherwise exclusively by us. Their leadership may be wise or otherwise; they may make mistakes here and there; nevertheless, such sins as they may commit will be our sins, and all the glory that they may achieve will be our glory. We prefer it so. It may be worth the while of the white men who desire to be "Our Professional Friends" to take note of this preference.

A Tender Point

When the convention of turtles assembled on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland it was found absolutely impossible to get a tortoise elected as leader. All turtles, conservative and radical, agreed that a land and water creature, who was half one thing and half another, was not an ideal choice for leader of a group which lived exclu

sively in the water. Whenever a leader of the Irish has to be selected by the Irish it is an Irishman who is selected. No Irishman would be inclined to dispute the fact that other men, even Englishmen like John Stuart Mill and the late Keir Hardie, could feel the woes of Ireland as profoundly as any Irishman. But they prefer to live up to the principle of "Safety First."

These two illustrations are to be taken as a prelude to an important point which is not often discussed in the Negro press because all of us-black, brown and particolored-fear to offend each other. That point concerns the biological breed of persons who should be selected by Negroes as leaders of their race. We risk the offense this time because efficiency in matters of racial leadership, as in other matters, should not be too tender to these points of prejudice when they stand in the way of desirable results. For two centuries in America we, the descendants of the black Negroes of Africa, have been told by white men that we cannot and will not amount to anything except in so far as we first accept the bar sinister of their mixing with us. Always when white people had to select a leader for Negroes they would select some one who had in his veins the blood of the selectors. In the good old days when slavery was in flower, it was those whom Denmark Vesey of Charleston described as "house niggers" who got the master's cast-off clothes, the better scraps of food and culture which fell from the white man's table, who were looked upon as the Talented Tenth of the Negro race. The opportunities of self-improvement, in so far as they lay within the hand of the white race, were accorded exclusively to this class of people who were the left-handed progeny of the white

masters.

Out of this grew a certain attitude on their part

towards the rest of the Negro people which, unfortunately, has not yet been outgrown. In Washington, Boston, Charleston, New York and Chicago these proponents of the lily-white idea are prone to erect around their sacred personalities a high wall of caste, based on the ground of color.. And the black Negroes have heretofore worshipped at the altars erected on these walls. One sees this in the Baptist, Methodist and Episcopal churches, at the various conventions and in fraternal organizations. Black people themselves seem to hold the degrading view that a man who is but half a Negro is twice as worthy. of their respect and support as one who is entirely black. We have seen in the social life of some of the places mentioned how women, undeniably black and undeniably beautiful, have been shunned and ostracised at public functions by men who should be presumed to know better. We have read the fervid jeremiads of "colored" men who, when addressing the whites on behalf of some privilege which they wished to share with them, would be, in words, as black as the ace of spades, but, when it came to mixing with "their kind," they were professional lily-whites, and we have often had to point out to them that there is no color prejudice in America-except among "colored" people. Those who may be inclined to be angry at the broaching of this subject are respectfully requested to ponder that pungent fact.

In this matter white people, even in America, are inclined to be more liberal than colored people. If a white man has no race prejudice, it will be found that he doesn't care how black is the Negro friend that he takes to his home and his bosom. Even these white people who pick leaders for Negroes have begun in these latter years to give formal and official expression to this principle. Thus it was that when the trustees of Tuskegee had to elect

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